Pokemon Go Servers Attract Wrath of DDOS Attackers (Hackers)

July 18, 2016

This weekend people in the whole world have gone frantic, as they face trouble signing into their all time favorite game Pokémon Go. Who can blame them? It is Pokémon after all! Many users complained the game has been down all weekend and for some they can only access it sporadically.

So, what is the reason?

A hacking team called OurMine came out in open to claim the DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. The team at OurMine also said it wouldn’t stop the attack until Niantic representatives contact them.

The group also left a message for Niantic, that no one will be able to play Pokemon Go till someone from the PokeMon Go reaches them through their website. OurMine is apparently trying to make the most of the Pokemon Go fever by doing stunts like these to attract people to their site.

According to reports, the OurMine team is a group of three teenagers, and the reason they hack into accounts is to spread awareness about cyber security. The team also went on to say, “If it did not hack celebs and DDoS popular games, someone else would.” I am not sure how true it is, but I must say if it is true, the team is pretty bold.

But the twist in the tale is OurMine is not the only group claiming ownership of the attack. Poodle Corp also seems to be behind the attack. It went on to say; they will take down the game for one whole day on 1st of August. We got to wait and watch for this one.

For those, who do not understand DDOS, it is a way hackers use to attack servers by flooding them with unusual traffic to the point where the server can not handle the volume of traffic flow in result causing the servers to crash. This is precisely what happened to Pokémon go over the weekend.

A lot of users took to social media to express their frustration. If you are an avid Pokemon Go fan and it is not working for you, maybe you should try checking the Pokemon Go server status. That way you’ll know if you’re the only one facing problems or is it the same for other users as well.

The company, however, has remained quiet on the issue. Niantic has denied issuing a statement about this and confirmed none of the allegations. The company, however, has taken on social media and wrote an apologetic message about the strange way the game is acting, they also expressed the team is already working on a fix. The company also thanked game users for being patient through it.

As we have mentioned in our last article, the game has gained overnight success and caught the attention of the hackers. This is not the first time the game server has crashed though. According to another report at independent Pokémon Go had crashed soon after the launch, due to heavy traffic the game received an overwhelming response.

At the moment the game is up and running again, and Niantic has added 26 more countries to the game over this weekend. I guess at the moment lets just have fun and enjoy the game in all the countries it is recently launched.